


Ardent

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: F/M, M/M, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nasty bout of amnesia after a diplomatically vital wrestling match leads Blake to post awful love poems on trees. <i>And in the meantime, Avon had been winding him up by pretending to be...Avon. Par for the course, really.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ardent

_Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too._ (As You Like It)

Blake caressed the vellum of the invitation. "This is splendid! I can't imagine a better opportunity to win over an entire populace in only one day."

"Oh, it's only a wrestling match," Avon said. "It can't make that much difference."

"But it does, Avon, you don't understand the centrality of the ritual to their culture. Their greatest heroes prove themselves in the ring. Commentators devote hours to analyzing match tapes. There's virtually no interpersonal violence within their society--all differences are resolved in the wrestling ring." Blake anticipated the objection. "Those who are not physically capable, use a hired champion."

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," Vila murmured.

"Blake, do you mean to say that all you have to do is win a wrestling match, and then the entire planet will adopt our cause?" Gan asked.

"By the same token, he has merely to lose a wrestling match, and an entire planet will be lost to his cause forever," Avon said. "And losing a match at this level is hardly conducive to one's health."

"No one's asking you to do it," Gan said.

"They wouldn't be fool enough," Vila said. "Hang about, Blake, do they know what you look like?"

Blake adverted modestly to his (not-unflattering) Wanted posters.

"I just thought that maybe they'd think Gan was you, and he's a lot bigger than you are."

"But my Limiter..."

"You could just sort of stand there and be bigger at him," Vila said.

"In my younger days, I was considered a fairly good football player," Blake said. "And I suppose that I could manage a few wrestling moves at need."  
Combatants were permitted to bring only one second. There were no more tickets available, so the Liberator crew was reduced to watching the match on Pay-Per-View.

"Charles," the other wrestler said, bowing slightly. He was sturdily built, not very tall, and Blake rather liked his amiable, blunt-featured looks. The snub nose was cute.

"Blake," Blake said. They removed their outer garments, under the keen scrutiny of numerous Neutral Arbiters, seconds, and sportscasters.

Neither of the combatants was carrying any concealed weapons, and perhaps we should draw a veil over how that was ascertained. At any rate, the ring officials provided each wrestler with a pair of thoroughly fluoroscoped boots and a length of cloth (held up for public inspection) to be wrapped sumo-style into a loincloth. That was the full inventory of the costumes for the title bout.

Things were quite different for the warm-up bouts. The howls of the crowd in the arena, yearning for blood or at least a fairly good simulacrum, reached the dressing-room. Nearly every Federation World Wrestling bout had a Bad Guy dressed as Travis, and the ceremonial moment had arrived for the Good Guy to sneak up on his blind side and splatter him all over the ring.

At last the moment arrived. The crowd saluted both the champions. Avon, at ringside, tried to keep calm. In a moment, the entire crew could shimmer in to fight if the situation got out of hand.

Oh, stop it, he told himself. After all, Blake might win.

He didn't believe it for a moment.

At first, the match was fairly even, and Avon came close to--not all that far from-- relaxing and enjoying this flexed, sweaty, public display of the vast majority of Blake. However, after awhile Blake began to tire, and his opponent noticed this and gave Blake a shove. Blake's boot slipped on the surface of the ring, and he slid backwards, cracking his head against one of the cross-sections of Impermeable trees serving as posts for the ring.

A gasp rose up from the crowd. The referee began to count. Blake didn't stir, long after the ten-count had been reached.

The referee raised Vinni Charles' arm to signal his triumph. His girlfriend's auburn hair swung from side to side as she jumped with excitement. The hair neatly covered the oval patch in her skull.

Then Vinni's arm fell off, in a great rattle of clockwork, so they had to declare the bout a tie.

Avon leaped into the ring, his pulse hammering in horror as panic consumed him. Protruding from Blake's supine form was....well, despite the aesthetics of the situation, an enormous erection was a terrible symptom, the stigmata of catastrophic spinal injury.

Then Blake moaned, stirred a little, and the loincloth slipped further. Avon swiftly altered his diagnosis. It wasn't a trauma symptom at all. It was...it was....gosh! Now, that bad puppy could get QUITE a few fathoms deep in love.

Stretcher bearers rushed Blake to the locker room. The ring officials firmly slammed the door in Avon's face. He took advantage of the opportunity to call the Liberator, but the arena (no doubt to prevent piracy of pay-per-view events) was strongly shielded.

"Everyone out!" the referee screamed. "Give this man air! Hofwood, call an ambulance! Mizahiel, start calling the advertisers about a rematch!"

A minute or two later, Blake, rubbing the back of his neck, glanced around the now-abandoned locker room. He clambered into the nearest set of clothes and a (rather tight) pair of boots and wandered away from the arena in the direction of the forest.

Being Blake and therefore the luckiest bugger in the phenomenological Universe, he quickly encountered a band of friendly outlaws . They offered him shelter, venison pasties, mead, and ripe apricots, and quickly fleeced him of 200 credits in gold (there was a well-stocked purse in one of the breeches pockets) by means of cogged dice. This is regrettable, but after all they were only friendly, not reformed.

"Jenna? Avon here. Has Blake come up yet?" (By the time there was no one to bar his way from the locker room, there was nobody in it either. Just on the off-chance, he decided to call the ship to see if Blake had found his way home.)

"Isn't he with you? Ruddy hell, Avon," Jenna said. "Are you boys having a competition for how many crew members you can lose? All right, if Blake calls in, I'll have Cally tell him to come back PDQ."

With Blake in trouble, Jenna had no intention of meekly sitting on the ship waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Pausing only to grab a handgun, a fistful of gold coins, a couple of teleport bracelets and a packet of breath mints, Jenna got herself teleported to the planet. Avon wasn't thrilled to see her, but he had to admit that with a whole planet to search through, her assistance could be useful.

Blake wandered about the forest for a few hours, until he came upon a humble cottage. A piece of parchment was pinned to the door, reading "Help Wanted: Cat Sitter...the key is under the mat." So he unlocked the door, fed and played with the moggy, and fixed himself a mutton-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich and a flagon of ale from the supplies in the larder. Thus refreshed, he felt an inexplicable impulse to search out parchment and ink.

"Well, this is the Forest of Arden," Avon said, consulting the map. He continued saying this at intervals and might have done so until The Arden Witch Project was in post-production. Eventually, however, Jenna stopped and asked a passing shepherd for directions. Five minutes later they walked past the "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" sign.

"Ay, now I am in Arden, the more fool I," Jenna said. "When I was at home, I was in a better place, but travelers must be content." She looked around the landscape with all the enthusiasm she would have shown for seeing Inga using up the last of Jenna's jar of Crème de la Mer.

Avon experienced a sudden premonition of--no, not danger, exactly. The flush at the back of his neck warned him that, any moment now, something extremely embarrassing was about to happen. A fluttering flash of beige, at the very end of his peripheral vision, caught his attention.

He drew his handgun as he whirled and landed in a crouch. Although he whipped his head from side to side, he saw nothing more threatening than a bit of parchment nailed to a tree.  
"KERR  
I IGNORE YOUR GRRRR  
IN THE HOPE I MIGHT  
FIND YOUR BITE  
IS YOUR NIBBLE AND MUCH WORSE  
THAN YOUR BARK"

This screed was signed "Ever Your Roj" in a flourishing hand. Avon ripped the parchment down and tried to tear it up, but some hope tearing up a piece of parchment. He crumpled it and nudged it down among some leaves. A few yards away, Jenna laughed. "Listen to this, Avon--

'STRIP THE CHOCOLATE-DARK COATING,   
BREAK THROUGH TO THE INNER ICE LOLLY,   
BITE OR LICK?  
VANILLA-PALE, SO COLD  
SO SWEET ON A STICK'-- it's signed Roj, as if you couldn't guess."

There were dozens more, nailed to the trees.

"An odd sort of ransom note," Jenna said. "Good news, then. He must be alive--or must have been alive when he wrote them--although he could hardly have been in his right mind. Well, we'll find him soon enough, and a day in the Med Unit should clear up the effects of that bang on the head." They agreed to split up and continue the search, calling in at one-hour intervals.

Roj couldn't quite remember how he got to--well, wherever it was. He remembered vaguely that the situation--whatever it was--was dangerous. So, when the knock came on the door, he hid underneath the sturdy solid-oak table.

A really hot guy who looked sort of familiar walked through the door. "Blake?" he said.

Oh, of course! Roj thought. Blake! That must be me! And this chap...actually he looks a lot like the one I seem to be so keen on. Except this one is nicer-looking--nicer-looking in the sense of not being so angry, I seem to recall the other one looking like a wet Sunday most of the time--but the other one's better-looking. "Where dwell you, pretty youth?" he asked.

"You don't recognize me?"

"You remind me of someone I know...but, no..."

"Ah. I live with a shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. Are you the fellow who keeps nailing poor-quality poetry to trees? If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel. But...excuse me for a moment."

Avon silently placed his bet on the outcome. Before he pushed back the cuff of his jacket, he guessed that this time the bracelet would work, but the ship would have moved off station. It was always one or the other.

Right. This time it was bracelet working, ship unavailable. Although the reception was terrible, he managed to contact Jenna. "I've found Blake, he's--well, reasonably all right, although we should observe him for concussion. I tried to reach the ship, but she's out of contact. I'll give you the coordinates....well, perhaps it would be best if you waited a while to come here. So, ah, so Liberator will have a chance to fight off those pursuit ships and swing back around."

"Up and safe, eh?" Jenna said. "That's more or less my own situation here, so why don't I pick you up later and bring the spare bracelet?"

"But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?" Avon asked.

"Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much."

"Love is merely a madness. Yet I profess curing it by counsel."

"Did you ever cure anybody that way?" Blake asked.

"Once," Avon said. "I told him to pretend that he wanted me, and I ordered him to solicit me every day. And I would be changeable, longing and liking, proud, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles. I would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him."

"I would not be cured," Blake said.

"Yes, I know, you were always absolutely pig-headed...I mean, the other man was."

"Well, suppose he were here--or you were back on your ship--what would you do then?" Avon asked.

"Grab him and fuck him straight through three deck levels and just this side of the energy banks," Blake said enthusiastically.

"I don't know him, of course, but what if he were the sort who values...a certain discretion and subtlety?"

"Oh, he'd probably say something like 'There are some manifestations of justice in a fundamentally unjust world--compensation has been made for your lack of cerebral endowments," --he always talks like that--but once he saw The Honest Man, that'd be all the argument he'd need."

"A big cock?" Avon said. "Is that the be-all and the end-all?"

"If I know my Alpha, that's the Omega," Blake said. "Goes a long way, anyroad. We're blokes, after all."

"Come woo me, woo me," Avon said. "For now I am in a holiday humor and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, and I were your very very Avon?"

"I would kiss before I spoke," Blake said.

Minutes later, Avon's bare arm could be descried, hurling the cat through the front door.

Fortunately it was a shepherd's hut, and lanolin products were in ample supply.

Shortly thereafter, Blake woke up. As a result of traumatic amnesia, certain recent events--principally those involving terrible poems--had vanished from his consciousness, although his medium-term memory was coming back. He wondered where the Liberator was and how he could get back to it and resume his epic quest.

His sense memory told him that he had happily stuffed himself silly in the not-too-distant past. Blake, face-down on the modest pallet, stretched in delicious languor, then reared up in horror as the propinquity of warm sheepskin raised the inference that his coadjutor had been a sheep.

In some ways Blake felt better, and in some ways worse, when he sat up and saw Avon on the other side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He had put his clothes back on. He was wrapped in a sheepskin, drinking coffee out of a china cup from the dresser. The cat was stretched across his lap, though possibly as a sentient space-heater rather than a Dumb Friend. "How are you, Blake?"

"I feel bloody marvelous. How about you?"

"In respect that you're conscious and moderately coherent, I'm delighted. In respect that you didn't bring a bracelet, I can't raise the ship on either of mine, and we're miles from anywhere, I'm appalled. In respect that we're alone, I like it very well. In respect that I don't know whether the first person to violate our solitude will be friend--Jenna's out there looking for you too--or foe, it is tedious. I've arranged some perimeter defenses if it's the latter. And it's brass-monkeys in here and there's only enough dry wood to boil the kettle and this is instant coffee. Would you like a cup? It'll have to be black, even if it's goat's milk it's gone off. Do you want something to eat?"

"No, I want another gorgeous jump like that last one," Blake said, remembering the way Avon had nearly chewed his face off, how wide his eyes grew when he saw how wide Blake's..., how he had moaned and matched each potent thrust with an answering rotation, until it had been like trying to play lacrosse in a flight simulator.

"I'd call it rather undistinguished, myself," Avon said.

Ah, now Blake remembered. He'd wandered away after that bang on the head in the wrestling match, gone to ground in this hut, and had been located by half of the search party. And in the meantime, Avon had been winding him up by pretending to be...Avon.

Par for the course, really.

"Undistinguished? And I suppose you could do better," Blake said, annoyed, intrigued, and aroused all at once.

"Of course."

"Then just come over here and try," Blake said.

Avon shrugged off his doublet and climbed onto the pallet, more or less behind Blake, and slid his hands beneath the blanket. He began to inscribe small circles with his fingertips, at each side of the small of Blake's back. After awhile, he bent his head and flicked the tip of his tongue against the nape of Blake's neck, and moving lower down his spine.

About mid-shoulderblade, he stopped, and put his arms around Blake and rested his head on Blake's shoulder. Blake arched back against him. Even making allowances for the codpiece, Blake noted that Avon was locked and loaded. Blake thrust an arm out from under the blanket to find the pot of salve. A solid grip pressing his elbow down deterred him.

There was a rustling of bedding, and Avon slid down. Blake tried to grab for him, but there was nothing within grabbing range. Two strong hands massaged the arch of Blake's right foot, and then his left. It was quite relaxing. Avon's mouth closing wetly on a foot felt...odd. Blake could almost feel what Avon did: the smoothness of Blake's skin sliding beneath Avon's hands, the solidity of well-anchored feet, the architectonic sturdiness of legs...By the time the feathery strokes of splayed fingers reached the top of Blake's calves, Blake was moving dreamily against the soft wool of the sheepskins, and he groaned when Avon started to kiss the backs of his knees.

Avon's bracelet chimed. "Jenna," it said. "Liberator's back on station. Rise and shine. I'll bring a bracelet for Blake."

"Fifteen minutes," Avon said through gritted teeth.

"I'll give you five," Jenna said.

Jenna strolled in, her arm around the waist, or more accurately the lumbar region, of a fellow who looked very much like Blake, although even bigger and with noticeable strands of gray threading through his ever-so-slightly receding curls.

Blake struggled to his feet (he was sitting on the floor, fastening his boots), his features distorted by a tsunami of memories (a few nostalgic, most of them terrible). A cry of "Thorv!" was torn from his throat. "Get out of my sight, you bastard, before I...."

"Roj, you don't understand," Jenna said. The other man hung his head, abashed. "He's different now."

Because what Blake remembered was a lifetime of animosity between the brothers. Putting solvent in one's younger brother's tube of spaceship glue might just pass as sibling rivalry (or as a psychological experiment in seeing how long it would take him to realize why his model pursuit ships kept falling apart) . Years of borrowing Roj's bicycle (and forgetting to fix the flat tire), "accidentally" erasing the datafiles for his homework, and dazzling Roj's girlfriends with his greater access to money for the vizzies and ice creams, might have become the fodder for anecdotes at family reunions.

Even before Blake's first arrest, there hadn't been any family reunions for years--not since Thorv poisoned their father's mind against Roj, not since Roj had been disinherited and cast out. And perhaps that was the seed of rebellion--that the enmity of the older brother against the younger might mirror the hatred of the Federation for its citizens.

Then a densely concentrated nightmare of memory burst all at once like a star shell. Blake remembered what it was that Ravella had just managed to say--the horror that he was just absorbing when it was subsumed in the greater horror of his second capture.

Yes, she had news about his brother and sister, all right. News that his sister had died in childbirth, on the remote outer planet where Thorv had arranged a marriage with an elderly plutocrat who offered a generous bride price. News that Thorv's pose as a mildly liberal dilettante cloaked his efficiency as a Federation operative, one who probably would have rejoiced in the brutal suppression of the Freedom Party. Even if there hadn't been a plump bonus in it for him.

Avon pinioned Blake's arms behind him, and struggled to restrain Blake from a Cain-ine leap at his brother's throat. First he grasped Blake's arms, pulling him back from the fray and consequently also back onto an item of Unfinished Business...Then he slid his hands down until he clasped Blake's wrists. It was certainly a most....interesting...sensation, feeling that powerful body struggling in his grasp....aaaaaah....

Jenna seemed to be saying something. "Yes, yes, he did all sorts of rotten things to you, but now he's very sorry..."

"I met an ancient rebel in the Forest," Thorv said. "After some question with him, I was converted both from my enterprise and from the world. "

"Oh, I suppose that's all right then," Blake said. "Still, don't do it again."

"I shan't," Thorv said.

"Now, where were we?" Blake asked, tugging his wrists free.

"To you I give myself, for I am yours," Avon said.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in my fantastically rare all-Shakesfic printzine, "Of Comfort and Despair."


End file.
